Abstract
Translanguaging has become an inescapable notion in the anglophone literature on multilingual education. Questions thus arise as to whether and how it should be imported into francophone educational discourse, which has developed parallel vocabularies and orientations. The stakes are not only terminological — how to import a notion with ill-defined contours from one discursive universe to another — but pedagogical and political: what value could be added by the notion of translanguaging, either translated or borrowed as is, not only in addressing the needs of plurilingual writers who, like francophone educators, must reconceptualize English disciplinary discourses in another language, but also in creating more equitable conditions for the circulation of ideas across linguistic and national lines? To tackle these questions, this paper draws on two sources of insight: strategies for cross-lingual mediation developed in translationand terminology studies, and lessons from the import of literacy into francophone discourse in the 1990s and 2000s. Existing uses and translations of translanguaging are then reviewed, and new translation equivalents proposed to render and clarify the multiple meanings of translanguaging and operationalize the notion in French. In keeping with a translanguaging approach, the paper translanguages about translanguaging, deepening our understanding of it through more than one linguistic lens.
 Keywords: Translanguaging, translation and writing pedagogy, multilingual terminology, multilingual academic literacies, crosslingual reading and composing, international circulation of ideas
 
Highlights
Translanguaging and multilingual academic literaciesThe term was restricted to an innovative language allocation strategy in Welsh bilingual programs, alternating input and output in two languages across lessons to promote content learning and literacy development in and across two languages (Baker, 2003)
(1) One of the main difficulties of translanguaging is conceptual and terminological . . . The difficulty of using the same term for different phenomena is related to the attractiveness of the term . . . (Cenoz & Gorter, 2017, p. 309)
(3) Translanguaging as a pedagogical practice promotes a deeper understanding of content, and develops the weaker language in relationship with the one that is more dominant. (Wei & García, 2017, p. 229)
Summary
The term was restricted to an innovative language allocation strategy in Welsh bilingual programs, alternating input and output in two languages across lessons to promote content learning and literacy development in and across two languages (Baker, 2003). A second avenue I explore in investigating the import of translanguaging into French is provided by lessons to be drawn from an earlier import, in the 1990s and early 2000s: that of “literacy” and derivatives such as “biliteracy” and “computer literacy.” Resistance to such imports at the time has noteworthy parallels to questions that can be raised about translanguaging, so it would be interesting to see how littératie (or littéracie) gained a foothold in Francophone education discourse and what added value it may have brought in terms of epistemological and disciplinary shifts. I conclude this intellectual journey by suggesting the possible added value that importing the notion of translanguaging, in some or all of its denotational complexity and ideological resonance, into French educational discourse might bring for understanding plurilingual writers’ composing practices and academic literacy development, and redrawing disciplinary and institutional lines in ways that help design and implement plurilingual approaches to writing instruction. C’est cette démarche onomasiologique qui, finalement, nous conduira à envisager différentes formes équivalentes, en français, des acceptions du terme translanguaging relevées en anglais
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
